Paul D. Miller’s analogy in the opening of his piece at The Dispatch this morning is good.

In one of Aesop’s fables, a deer fleeing hunters takes refuge in a cave, only to fall prey to a lion into whose den he had stumbled. The moral: Sometimes safety is an illusion hiding greater dangers.

Let me offer an updated version: The deer flees to the cave knowing the lion was there, hoping to hire the lion to take out the hunter. The lion takes payment, roars at the hunter, and eats the deer. Who got the better deal?

In case it’s not obvious, Miller makes it clear: “deer” is to “conservative Christians” as “hunter” is to “progressive left.”

Quite fitting. I would correct some misleading parts of the analogy, however. All of the deer that I know did not jump into a cave and make a deal with a lion. They carved out their own cave, invited a lion in for protection, and told themselves and everyone else that the lion is not, in fact, a lion but is really a fluffy bunny rabbit being framed as a lion by the hunter.

Anyway, we all know how it turns out with the fluffy rabbit…